


Endings

by faeidolon



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, I wrote this before realizing p5r has akiren wind up back in jail so it's AU from there, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mentions of Shido - Freeform, Not Canon Compliant, Ren is referred to w/female pronouns for a good chunk of the fic, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Persona 5 Protagonist, just FYI in case you want to avoid that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24514873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeidolon/pseuds/faeidolon
Summary: there are only five people who know what really happened to goro akechi. ren is so glad to be one of them.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Kudos: 40





	Endings

On March 20th, the trains in Tokyo were running on time, their commuters unafraid of any disturbances in their schedule. Why should they - there hadn't been any mental incidents in months. Everything was normal - back to the way it should be.

Unnoticed by anyone in the crowd, a teenage girl slipped onto one of the trains headed out of the city, to the northern prefectures. She dodged between the people and headed to one of the rear cars, hoping to grab a seat before her long trip so she could set her bags down and not have to hold them close to her the entire time. Once she managed to sit down, she rifled through her pockets and pulled out a phone and headphones, sliding them over her head and blocking out the sound of the people around her. As the train pulled out of the station, she glanced out the window at all the passersby waiting on the platform for their trains and watched them go about their day. She reached up to twist a strand of hair around her finger before stopping and switching to fidget with her hair - she wasn't quite used to the short cut she'd given herself just that morning, and had forgotten she no longer had hair to play with when she felt like she needed to.

And unknown to everyone on the train as it headed north, broadcasting screens in news rooms and public areas across the city flickered before dying to black, then being reborn in a flash of light several seconds later.

* * *

"Hello Tokyo. Sorry about the interruption, but I had some things that really couldn't go unsaid for much longer. I'm, uh - sorry to be presumptuous, but I'm sure you recognize me, and I think you'll get why it had to be done this way."

Against the backdrop of a grey blanket stood a girl in a Shujin Academy winter uniform, hair long and messy flowing down past her shoulders, square glasses taking up most of her face. She blushed slightly, fidgeting like she was uncomfortable drawing attention to her, even though no one was watching her while she was filming.

"So! The Phantom Thieves. I'm sure everyone wants to know the full story, and I'm sure a lot of people have been making guesses about what happened. First things first - we can't steal hearts anymore. Neither can anyone else. The way we were doing that has been closed off, permanently."

"Secondly, I can't share everything that happened. To be honest, I don't think I'd really want to - and you guys _really_ don't want to hear it, trust me on this - but a lot of it is classified government information, and I don't wanna be arrested again! Sorry for being selfish, guys." At that last part, the girl chuckled sheepishly, kind of embarrassed with what she was saying.

"But I'll explain the best I can, and for that I have to go back - way, way back, like two decades or so. Back then Masayoshi Shido wasn't as well-known as he is today, just a lower-ranked politician trying to grab whatever power he could, but he was still just as much of a manipulative, greedy asshole as now - or well, when he was before we changed his heart. He would make women sleep with him, and then throw them away when they'd outlived their usefulness to him.

One of those encounters ended up with the woman getting pregnant, and when she told him, he threatened her to stay out of his life, saying he'd never acknowledge the child. She gave birth and ended up raising the kid alone, but due to the pull Shido was slowly gaining, she wasn't able to get any sort of good job. She ended up working in the red light district to try to provide for her son, trying to be a good mother, but the pressure was just too much. When her son was seven or so she killed herself, leaving him to be passed around from care home to care home like most other orphans are.

Now why am I telling you this? I won't say now, but just remember it. It'll explain a lot of things later."

* * *

On the morning of February 4th, Futaba woke up slowly, reluctant to get out of bed. On one hand, she was super glad to be back in the real world, away from the pull of Maruki's reality, but on the other - god, why did he have to use her mother in his plans? She had thought she'd been able to cope with it, she was doing better thanks to everyone's help, but getting able to talk with her again just brought all the memories back to the front of her mind and made losing her fresh again.

Her thinking was interrupted by her phone buzzing, which was a surprise - out of all the Phantom Thieves, she would've thought she'd be the only one up this early, thanks erratic sleep schedule. Everyone else was sure to be exhausted by the fight yesterday, even if reality got reset. Though it made sense, she mused as she pulled it up, whoever was awake probably wanted to check and make sure everyone was okay -

[Private chat between Futaba Sakura and Ren Amamiya]

| Ren: FUtaba can you track akechis phone

| Futaba: I can try? uhhhhh do you have a reason why

| helloooooooooo

| okay his phone's at his apartment makes sense

| wait

| wait what

| i've tracked his phone before and i couldn't find it when he went into hte metaverse

| thats hwo we knew he was ghoin there

| but hsi pohen is here noww

| even tho last we knew he was dead in the metaverse

| n thas where maruki resret everythign to

| ren??????????/

| waths goin on

* * *

"The start of the Phantom Thieves, as you probably guessed, was at Shujin Academy. We didn't target Kamoshida on purpose - well, we did, but it wasn't like we were just going after him for no reason. I'd never met him before and he decided to hate me and my friends, sexually harass me and my other female friend and others, and we discovered he'd been abusing the volleyball team, and we knew it was bad and we had to do something about it and - well, we kind of had to, especially once he forced Shiho into committing suicide.

We kind of tripped our way into figuring out how to steal hearts, after that. No, I'm not gonna say how, just know that if done properly, there's no chance of causing harm to the person whose hart we steal. Think of it kind of like a video game - once we clear a level in the game, we change the person's heart, but we have to clear the level by fighting monsters and figuring out what the person's doing. That means there's risk to us while we're doing this, and we have to be careful or we could end up injured or dead.

But we managed to take down Kamoshida! We were so glad we had managed to do something, and relieved it had actually worked - I kind of think we all had doubts until the end when he confessed. We didn't know what to do next and we thought about giving up, until we ran into some bald asshole and his companions at a buffet, and they shoved us around, didn't apologize, and said it was their right to do so because they were more powerful than us. Didn't realize it at the time, but that was Shido and his cohorts, and they're the ones who made us determine to keep changing hearts out of spite if nothing else, so good job guys on causing your own downfall!

Next up was Madarame, who we found out about through rumors and then some investigation into his life and work. What he was doing went so far beyond just taking his pupils' work as his own, it - it - ughh!"

The girl on camera threw her hands up in the air in frustration, then tore off her glasses to rub her eyes clear. She sighed heavily before putting them back on and attempting to straighten her hair (however futile), and turned back to face the camera.

"Sorry about that - Madarame's one of the targets that get me frustrated every time I think about him. But he's dealt with now! At least I have that for comfort! Anyway, after that is when we really started getting noticed, both by the media, but also by law enforcement. You know what they say - once is a coincidence, twice could be a pattern..."

* * *

Iwai didn't glance up from his magazine when the door to his shop signaled a customer's entrance, but he definitely paid attention when someone slammed their hands down in front of him. He looked up to see Ren staring at him - almost a glare, like she'd just been through a furious argument and was still running on the anger and adrenaline that had been her fuel for the past while. It had to be something serious, he figured, for her to come storming in here despite the dubious legal status she was in, with the cops unsure of whether or not she needed to be put in jail for what she'd done.

"Iwai. Tell me you know someone who can make legal documents."

He blinked at her, but she remained steadfast. "Kid, that's a yakuza thing, and I ain't a part of the yakuza anymore. I'm out of that business, you know that."

"I know," she countered, "but I also know you wouldn't just close off resources like that. You think more into contingencies than that, Iwai, you wouldn't close a door you could need unless they screwed you over in some way."

With a sigh, he stood up from his chair, walking over to the back room and holding the door open for her to head into. "You sure what you're getting into, kid? What do you need so bad that you're willing to potentially sell your soul for a deal?"

"Oh, Iwai. I know what selling my soul really is, and this isn't it. This - " she scoffed " - this is the better alternative."

* * *

"I mentioned I'd met Akechi at the TV station, right? Well, because of that, I was able to talk to him when the student council president at Shujin mentioned she was trying to get him to be the guest at our cultural festival, and I managed to convince him to show up. There's plenty of footage of that, and even more speculation about what happened during the 10 minutes he had to go offstage before he left without announcing who he thought the Phantom Thieves were.

I can answer that question - he went to pull me and the other thieves into a back room, to ask us - well, blackmail really - to changing the heart of a prosecutor he'd encountered who had some very distorted desires. In exchange for getting her heart changed and being allowed to join and observe us while we did that, our identities wouldn't be revealed, and we'd also stop being Phantom Thieves after this case.

That... didn't exactly work out. You know I ended up getting arrested and supposedly committing suicide while in custody - what you didn't know is that was a plan on Akechi's part, to get me in custody. And - "

A glance straight into the camera, firmly staring at the future audience.

"- And a ploy on Shido's part: once Akechi had gotten me into custody, he was to assassinate me and make it look like I had killed myself in custody. Thankfully we found out about this plan and it didn't succeed, but - well, you can imagine the stress we went through trying to take down Shido while also pretending that I was dead. Actually I kind of felt like I was dead - did I tell you what the cops did while I was in custody? Well..."

* * *

"Lala," her assistant barkeep begged her one night before Crossroads opened, "please tell me you know someone who's willing to foster. It's only for another two to three years, I promise, they don't have to do anything - "

Lala cut Ren off with a hand held up to her mouth. "Is this about you? Kid, I've told you, you don't need to beg me for that - "

"It's _not,_ Lala, I swear, my family's fine and I'm excited to be going back to them. It's just..."

Ren hopped up on one of the bar stools as she trailed off, grabbing a napkin off the counter and beginning to mess around with it. Her head was down to avoid Lala's gaze, which was odd - Ren was never this avoidant when talking to her. Or, well, this shy and meek, she guessed. She'd seen Ren be avoidant when working the bar, see her dodge customers' questions about her personal life and instead ply them with more drinks or food, whatever they needed to make their visit a pleasant experience, but nervous? Acting like this was deathly important to her? Hell, she was never this nervous even when visiting when she was supposed to be playing dead and avoiding spots like a bar she'd been known to visit in the past!

"Spit it out kid. You've got nothing to worry about. If one of your friends needs some help I'll do the best I can to help them out. I've got a network of folks I know who would be willing to take in a kid for a while, even up to a few years, but I do kinda need to know their circumstances to get them a good match. All the folks are nice, sure, but there's a couple I gotta rule out if you give me, say, a nonbinary kid - can't put them with some of my single friends who are deep in the closet in some bigoted areas."

Ren glanced up at her, eyes wide, like she couldn't believe she was being helped. Lala felt that even if Ren had been drowning in the middle of a stormy ocean and she threw her a life ring, there's no way Ren could seem more grateful than she was now.

"Oh, if any of them are looking to move to a more rural area, that'd be great - I can actually give them some suggestions on friendly towns they should check out. But this situation with him - well - I've told you about him before, but it's kind of gotten more complicated since..."

* * *

"While fighting Shido, we had an encounter with Akechi that helped explain a lot of his behavior. That kid I mentioned earlier, Shido's illegitimate child, who lost his mother and then got bounced around from institute to institute? That was him. And everything he'd done in his life to that point - staying up all night to get perfect grades, doing everything he could possibly do for his work as a detective, trying to have a perfectly crafted public image? That was all in a desperate attempt to get someone, anyone, to acknowledge him, to not toss him away the moment he became "not worth it" in their eyes.

And Shido had taken notice, of course he had, and he used that desire for attention to force Akechi to essentially be his hitman. Cause all the psychotic breaks and mental shutdowns, and take down anyone who got in his way. And what could Akechi do? I know some of you are thinking "well I'd just say no" - you don't understand the pull Shido had. Once he decides to mess with your life, you're not getting out unless he lets you, and there's a decent chance that ending will be down the barrel of a gun if you upset him. Fuck, Shido got me expelled and sent to Tokyo because I happened to run into him in the street and stop him from assaulting someone, I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if he had decided I needed to work for him and I said no.

He was trying, though. He didn't know how to change hearts, but he thought if he could induce a mental shutdown in Shido, then he'd at least be able to stop some of the shitty stuff Shido was doing, would be able to escape him. I saw the look on his face when we explained how we steal hearts - he acted excited, like it was new information to him, but there was a sense of wistfulness, like 'if only I had known this before, things would have been so different'.

Unfortunately, like I said before, our work comes with risks, and in that encounter with Akechi, we ran into a situation that ended up with him trapping himself in an area with a ton of danger so the rest of us could get away. It was terrible, having to leave him behind to die.... I - I - "

The girl disappeared off camera for a moment.

* * *

| Futaba: are you sure you want me to air this??

| Ren: I'm sure.

| Futaba: is he okay with it????

| Ren: Well

| To be honest I may not have told him word for word what I'm saying

| But he approves of the general end message I'm making for the public

| Futaba: and the 'unexpected' side effect that talking abt the end will have

| Ren: Oh yeah that's kind of my main motivation for doing this

| Futaba: you realize you're putting stuff out of order and like

| ascribing motivations that he might not have had

| Ren: Yeah no that's the 'manipulating the public' aspect kind of need that part

* * *

"And then some weird stuff happened that I can't go into, but it involves why Shido wasn't arrested at first after his change of heart, but it ended up with Akechi re-appearing and turning himself in to the cops. He got taken into custody so that none of the other Phantom Thieves had to, and everything was calm.

And then my friend won a lottery game with some spare change she had in her pocket.

And then Akechi got released from jail after only a day or two because the cops didn't need him anymore.

And more and more weird shit started happening, and it goes into more weird stuff I can't talk about, but if the past month and a half or so felt like a weird fever dream in regards to Akechi, the Phantom Thieves, and Shido? That would be why - reality got a bit... weird, for a while.

Beyond the month being weird there were some serious things going on. We had the chance to talk to Akechi and question why he survived something that really should have killed him. Answer was? He didn't. The thing with reality being all weird had temporarily made him alive again, and he had to help us out restoring reality knowing at the end of it he'd go back to being dead. And.... and he did it. Probably the most helpful out of all of us, too. He knew he couldn't easily make up for all the shit Shido had made him do, but dammit he was going to die trying.

And he did.

And in the past month or so since everything got restored I haven't seen a single person talking about him or questioning where he is or why he's missing.

So this is just... " the girl ruffled a hand through her hair. "Fuck."

"I'm not entirely sure what this is. An explanation of the Phantom Thieves, I guess. An explanation of Akechi too. More than that it's also sharing his story, making sure it's not forgotten, and that people don't just think of him as entirely good or entirely bad.

And more than that, I want to make this a cry to fix things. Make society better, so that no one ever has to grow up like Akechi, that there's even a chance people like Shido can manipulate others because they got thrown away like garbage and went unnoticed by society. Fix the institution and foster system for orphans, fix welfare so parents don't have to sell themselves to survive, keep checks and balances so politicians don't gain that much power, reform the police so they can't torture others, change the justice system... the list goes on and on.

I guess, society? Here's a calling card for you - people are gonna change your heart, make you confess your crimes and change your ways. And you'd better be ready."

* * *

A sharp poke startled Ren out of a light doze, and he jerked up to see his teacher looking at him, an amused smile on her face. "Ren, can you answer the question?"

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhh....."

"Tangent of 2x," came a whisper from behind him, which he repeated to the teacher. She nodded and turned back to the board, and a snort came from behind Ren.

"Really? Did you always pay this little attention in school?"

"Hey, I had some important stuff to think about," Ren replied, glancing around in his chair to see his savior.

Hikaru Sasaki, new student in a class that, with the exception of Ren missing his second year, had stayed the same since the start of middle school. Dark brown hair cropped short around his face, framing dark eyes covered by a pair of circular glasses, he wore the uniform blazer well. His birthday was the earliest of the grade, occurring right as the school year started. He also happened to be glaring hard enough to set Ren on fire, but that was just kind of normal for him. He could be a bit of an asshole to people, but got along okay with them - it was just Ren he argued with, though to be fair, Ren instigated a good bit of those by being a smug irritant.

Hikaru just let out a rough sigh and turned back to his work. "Pay better attention, or I'm not helping you out next time." Ren smiled - no, no he wouldn't. And that's what made him Hikaru.

* * *

"I still can't believe they just let you wear the boys' uniform," Goro confessed as he and Ren walked down the road away from the school, late autumn leaves crunching underneath their feet.

"I told you," Ren insisted, "this town's super chill about things like that. I just told them 'hey I'm a boy' and they worked out a clothing swap where I got one of the old boys' uniforms for free. Didn't even have to pay."

"How on earth do you have so much luck?"

"Hey, you're a part of this town now! They'll help you out just as equally!"

"I still can't believe that," Goro said softly. "It's just - this town is so nice, it's _odd_. They don't even care that my - my caretakers, are a lesbian couple. You're openly trans - "

"And bi," Ren added.

"- And bi, and - and - "

Ren stopped walking, turning to face Goro. "Goro... are you really worried about how accepting this town is, or is it something else? Like, is it that you don't think you deserve being here and being liked - " Ren stopped as a hint of a grimace flashed across Goro's face.

"I... suppose that could be part of it. I can see how you enjoy being here, and I would like, on some level, to be free to enjoy that as well, but it's just... " he trailed off.

Ren's heart seized with emotion. "Goro... just, listen to me. You deserve to be here, alive. You deserve to be liked by others, to have other people enjoy having you around. You deserve to be able to be the best in our class, or slack off, or even jump out the window in the middle of class if you want. You deserve to want to study whatever you want, to become whatever you want, to do whatever you want. You deserve to be loved, and I know it's only been a short time, but Hana and Akari care for you, I heard them talking to Lala when she came to visit a few weeks ago, and they said they care for you so, so much, and it's not just them, I - I - "

Choking on his own words, Ren couldn't say anything more, and trying to get Goro to understand, he reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it softly. Goro started at him in a sort of stupor for a few moments, taking a sharp breath, before firming his resolve and squeezing Ren's hand back. He turned back down the road without a word, hands still tangled, and set off, Ren following afterward.

"... me too."

* * *

(Ten or so minutes before class started on the first day of school, self-appointed class leader Aoi Morita stood up on her chair, clapping her hands to bring everyone to attention. Students shuffled around from their friend groups to face her, while the teacher kept her head down in her work, paying attention but still busy with the year's paperwork.

"All right, I know we've gone over this before, but now that we're at the start of the year, we need a quick review of our strategy. Riku, your psych report? And before you can start - yeah, we all know you're not a professional yet, but you're the best we've got, so go on."

A boy stood up with a sigh, shaking his head slightly. "Right. So they're both gonna be their own unique challenges. Ren's gonna be slightly easier - he knows we accept and protect our own, we've just got to get him back to get used to it. My cousins aren't starting school until tomorrow and they texted me he's on his way, so he's showing up, I'm going to assume he's just developed a need to not draw attention to himself, for obvious Phantom Thief reasons. Also, fuck cops." Everyone in the room nodded.

"Hikaru's going to be a bit harder - obviously we've all heard what Ren said about his life, and even if we assume some things were changed up, he's not going to have an easy time adapting. We definitely should just keep showing him that we'll accept him, keep inviting him to do things no matter how many times he says no, just don't annoy him by doing so. Try to let Ren sort of take the lead as well - hopefully he's still got that trait of dragging his crushes around with him, that'll maybe help? It's a lot of guesswork at this point, who knows how well he'll adapt."

"Thank you, Riku," Aoi said as he sat down. "Anyone else have any - "

She got cut off by a student dashing into the classroom. "Hikaru's coming!" The room was suddenly full of shuffling around and re-organizing bodies.

* * *

When Goro opened the door to his new classroom, everyone was split into groups, chattering and overlapping with each other as they took the time to catch up before the start of the school year. One girl, sitting on top of a desk with her blazer tied around her waist, gesticulating wildly to her friends, turned as the door opened to greet him with a wide grin. "Oh, Hikaru! You're early!

We're so glad you're here!")

**Author's Note:**

> it's still june 2nd in my time zone so hbd goro!!! this. wasn't supposed to be my first fic but it haunted me until i finished it so i guess it is now!!


End file.
